Huawei’s Hongmeng OS is coming as early as this year
Huawei hasn’t been sitting idly by as the US threatens to cut the company off vital technology partners. The company has been formulating backup plans just in case the trade ban on them becomes permanent, and one of those plans involve creating an Android-based operating system of their own.
The OS, dubbed Hongmeng OS, is apparently already being widely installed on devices for testing, with research firm Rosenblatt Securities stating that the company has already shipped around 1 million of these phones for testing.
That’s an impressive number of phones considering that those devices aren’t sold in the market as of yet, and furthermore, the report says that the in-house OS is compatible with all Android applications and has increased security functions to protect personal data.
Huawei’s own CEO of the consumer business group Richard Yu has also stated in an interview “will be available as early as this fall or next spring at the latest”. It’s possible that Huawei may opt to use Hongmeng in the launch of their next generation Mate smartphone if the company hasn’t been taken off the US blacklist in the next two months.
Earlier the US government placed Huawei on a government blacklist of sorts, which meant the company had to ask for US gov’t approval for any kind of technology transfer from its partners based in the US. That blacklist included prominent US-based companies like Google.
